Love in the Life of Isobel Crawley
by Lavender and Hay
Summary: The seven loves of Isobel Crawley.
1. Chapter 1

**1.**

Isobel loves her father more than any one else in the world. She thinks he's wonderful. He has a stern face; he's tall and straight-backed and very cross when things aren't done properly, but she's not afraid of him one bit.

When he comes home from his surgery at the end of the day she'll watch him over the banister from outside the nursery door as he hangs up his coat and his hand. He knows she does it every day, but he pretends not to see her, at least at first. Then he'll look up at her and wink; then walk into the drawing room as if nothing's happened. It's her favourite part of the day.

He knows everything. She's never known him not be able to answer a question. Isobel knows her brother wants to be just like him when he's older; and she's exactly the same but for some reason Nanny always laughs at her when she says that.

Still, Isobel doesn't care; what does Nanny know? Nanny doesn't know what it's like when they see each other and he picks her up and swings her up to the ceiling.

"Mind the lamp," Mother always says, watching them with amusement, "We'll never find another as good."

She is father's little girl; she can do whatever she wants.

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	2. Chapter 2

**2. First Love**

Isobel is fifteen years old, and not at all given to falling in love; she considers not silly exactly, but bothersome. That is why she's particularly miffed that it's happened to her; with possibly the most inconvenient person on this earth.

It never entered her dear father's mind that his daughter might not be given a proper education; he took great pains to find the best girls' school in the whole of Manchester, no matter how high the fees. Only the best for his Isobel.

And the best she got. Her education was seen to by only the most competent, the most impressive teachers in the north of England. Particularly in one field.

The science master is ever so good looking. Of course, that's not why Isobel likes him. Tall well-spoken, the youngest male teacher by about ten years, and certainly cuts quite a dashing figure; striding down the halls in his red coat pretending to be stern with the pupils but never quite managing. He doesn't need to be, everyone likes him; particularly the older girls. They giggle behind their copy books and walk off in the most obscenely flouncy way. He doesn't even notice.

Of course, Isobel isn't one of them. She has absolutely no interest whatever in good looks- or so she tells herself, anyway. Her fondness for _his _good looks came later on. What she first loved about him was his enthusiasm, his impeccable knowledge- second only to her father's-, his brilliance both in understanding science and teaching it to her. She can hardly bear it when her friends chatter in his lessons: who'd be that stupid?

She sits- perfectly straight-backed- at her desk, waiting, waiting for him to smile or better still for him to ask her a question. Every time he looks in her direction she feels her heart give a flutter that she has long stopped trying to suppress.

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	3. Chapter 3

**I'm sorry, Elsie's Seven Loves aren't writing themselves very well. I will try to update it tomorrow.**

**3. Romance **

"Crawley! Crawley! Over here, I've got someone I want you to meet!"

Isobel shakes her head a little and smiles. Her father's not by any means a loud man, but when he's in comfortable surroundings he can sometimes be exuberant, to say the least. And the surroundings at the Manchester Annual Science Convention are the most comfortable he could possibly be. Mother doesn't strictly approve of him bringing Isobel along with him, she considers it a man's place. "But, why not?" he says always, "The girl's keen enough!" As it happens, this time they haven't actually told her where they're going.

"I want you to meet someone," Daddy tells her, "Young Crawley, my assistant. I think you'll like him. Where's that confounded man got to? Ah! Here he is! Isobel, this is my assistant, Reginald Crawley. Crawley, my daughter, Isobel."

For once Isobel doesn't notice the swell of pride in her father's voice as he pronounces her his daughter. She's busy looking at Crawley. His looks are rather striking- that's before taking those eyes into account-, but you can tell by his manner that he doesn't think so himself. He blinks politely at her and inclines his head as she extends her hand for him to shake.

"How do you do?" she asks.

"Nicely, thank you,"

Despite his meek aspect, there is a definite twinkle in his eye and it does not escape her. Stop it, Isobel!- she thinks to herself. You have always maintained that this kind of thing simply can't exist at first sight, why are you trying to throw yourself into it? It occurs to her that she hasn't let go of his hand yet.

"Crawley has been helping me at the new surgery," her father explains, "I thought you two might be interesting company for each other; a lot in common and so on. Ah! There's Johnson over there, I must have a word with him, excuse me!"

He nods to Reginald and vanishes, as he is given to do, into to crowd, leaving them standing together.

There is a pause.

"So, Miss-..."

"Isobel," she corrects him.

"Isobel. What sort of science interests you?" he begins pleasantly; genuine interest in his tone.

"Oh, most sorts," she realises that probably sounds terribly vague and not at all intelligent, "Not so keen on physics. I rather favour medicine."

"Yes, your father told me that was the case."

They both glance across the room to where he is conversing with one of his other colleagues, with great enthusiasm and much gesticulating.

"Do you find my father eccentric, Dr Crawley?"

"Very."

"Oh, I am glad," she says to him, "I shouldn't have thought you had any sense of humour otherwise."

He grins quite a roguish grin. Stop it, Isobel.

"No, your father makes for quite an interesting mentor," he replies, "And very insistent that I should be here today."

"Which of the exhibitions did he think would interest you?" she wants to know.

He shuffled a little.

"Actually, it wasn't so much of an exhibition. It was you."

Her heart well nigh stopped.

"Well," she always did talk nonsense in situations like this, "I trust I've probably made an exhibition of myself. Do you find me interesting?"

Heaven preserve them, she was being coy! Thankfully, he laughs at her.

"Very."

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	4. Chapter 4

**4. One-sided Love**

Isobel hadn't ever realised it before, but she has let her mother down quite badly. It breaks her heart, because now she loves her very dearly and she's sure her mother loves her too, but these days it has come to feel as if it's more of a statutory love. She is obliged to love her only daughter, regardless of how imperfect she is, only she can't quite reconcile herself to those imperfections and love her any more than that.

For a little while everything seemed so golden. Matthew was born; the most beautiful little boy in the world and as healthy as they could have possibly wished, despite his mother being a little bit older than usual for having her first child. Reginald was just the same as ever. And then her father's health began to fail. It was odd, the man who had cured her of every childhood illness imaginable falling ill himself. And not getting better.

Mother had taken Daddy's death very badly, and so had Isobel. The man who had held their childhood home together with his liveliness, gone so suddenly, neither quite knew how to comfort the other. And from then they seemed to drift in opposite ways.

Isobel realises that she must have hurt her mother quite badly over the years. If there was a side to take she always took her father's. They both ignored her mother's wish for her to be put with a governess and sent her to school instead. Instead of scouting the city's house parties for a dashing, boring, wealthy young man to marry, she settled for sweet, honourable, intelligent Reginald Crawley and had done without her own lady's maid. Each of these things she did because she felt as if they were what suited her, but now it seems quite plain that her mother took them as personal slights.

She wishes quite fiercely that she and her mother could be friends again. Perhaps her mother wishes it too, but Isobel rather thinks that her mother's temperament has rather past ferocity by now, she's given up on it. And now Isobel's left feeling a little blank and unfeeling every time she calls to see her. Almost as if she's been burned out, white.

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	5. Chapter 5

**You might think this is out of character for Isobel. Needless to say, I don't think it's stretching things too far- after all, I've just written it- and I've tried to qualify it as best I can. We don't often see the words "Lust" and "Isobel" in Downton fics, so I thought I'd be radical. Because of this it turned into a bit more than a drabble. As a result, I'm leaving Elsie's next chapter until tomorrow so it's coherent. **

**5. Lust**

Over the past few years, Isobel realises that one of the things she's missed above all others is the feeling of a body lying beside her, wrapped around hers, tangled lazily up in her bedsheets. She's not in love exactly- not like she loved, still loves, Reginald-, but she loves him intensely all the same; and it's a comfort that he's here.

It's been ten years since Reginald died. Matthew actually chose to go away to school. She let him go in the vague hope that he might be happier there than she was at home. A widow now as opposed to a wife, she feels rather like the odd one out in her old circle of friends and she doesn't want to cause them the inconvenience of having to try to make her feel better; so for the most part she keeps her distance.

Once she feels like leaving the house, she walks a lot. Through parks mostly, though occasionally she chances her arm on the busier shopping streets; taking in her surroundings without great feeling. Observing them, rather than involving herself in them; still feeling blank. It is on one of these walks that she meets him.

She knows straight away that there's something about him. All of these hundreds of thousands of faces she's passed and out of them all she remembers his. He sits on the bench near the park gate, calmly, dressed smartly in his business suit. She thinks he comes to sit there during his lunchtimes. And one day- she hasn't been eating well, or sleeping much recently- she feels the need to sit. On his bench.

"Do you mind if I sit down?" she asks, hoping he won't say no, though he can't very well own the bench.

"By all means," he gestures politely.

She sits down, getting her breath back, squinting a little in the bright midday light.

"I've seen you before," she remarks to him, finally.

He smiles briefly. He has a handsome face, though worn out with lines. He has the air of a man prematurely old.

"You'd have needed spectacles if you hadn't," he replies.

It's good to laugh at something without it being bitter. He chuckles a little too, looking pleased that his rather flippant remark has cheered her up so much. They are quiet for a few more moments.

"Do you mind if I say something?" he asks, his voice is vague like hers, "After all, we're simply strangers on a bench, there's not much chance I can really want to insult you all too deeply. It's just that," he sees her curious expression, "In all the times you've walked past here, that's the first time I've seen you smile."

She chooses not to reply.

"Do you come here often?" she finally asks, hoping he will realise that she took aversion to his question as opposed to him. He does.

"Every day," he answers, "It's better than stuffy clubs for lunch. I bring a sandwich and have a cup of tea when I go back to the bank." 

So he was a banker. Or at least he worked in a bank. Given that they were no more than strangers on a bench, she rather stores away this information about him as if preparing to sit an examination.

And she finds herself coming back. He's telling the truth, he does come here every day. She does too now. And she's stored little shreds, scraps, of information about him up; building a patchy picture of his life. She wonders if he does the same about her.

He is a widower. His wife died three years ago. She can tell he loved her; though the words never so much as pass his lips- it's the far off look in his eyes that let her know. He went to school not far from where Matthew is now. His father worked in the same bank as he does now. He never knew his mother.

They go to tea shops now, too. It got too chilly in the winter to stay outside all of the time.

And then:

And then they start kissing.

She feels a closeness to him that she can only put down to their similar experiences. There's a similar sadness to them both; they hanker for loved ones they can no longer have but by now like each other enough to be reasonably happy together. So why not take it further? It starts with a peck on the cheek in the lonely moments when they say goodbye at half past one. Passers-by generally assume they're brother and sister and let it go unnoticed. Then soft kisses on the hand when they meet, looking up cautiously into her eyes.

He's a few years younger than she is. But apart they each feel a hundred years old anyway, so what does that really matter?

Then it gets more serious. She's long since invited him to her house, that's where she needs him, if she's honest with herself; in the dark lonely spaces that weren't always like that. He arrives one evening- after work- wondering if he can come in. Of course he can; it's almost as if she's been waiting.

They're talking, they're talking quite normally, and suddenly their hands are all over each other. She blushes to think of it in such a matter of fact way, but it's true: at nearly fifty years of age, Isobel Crawley finds herself reaching out in the most direct and physical way possible. Kissing him with all the might of her loneliness until there's no breath left in her.

She's not altogether sure how richer ladies than herself manage to have affairs. If she had her own lady's maid, she'd have surely lost her nerve from fear of getting caught. Peering around the tops of the stairs, praying that they don't bump into the housemaid, they make their way up to her bedroom.

She can't quite believe she's doing this. Well, she can, she can feel it all so perfectly in a way she hasn't felt anything in years. She can't believe she's doing something so impulsive, so risky, so wanton. But she's here, she knows him, she likes him, she almost loves him and she feels so very content, letting him do this to her. Her sense of reality, of proportion switches off altogether as his hands tangle in her hair. If she believed in fate, she'd say it was that.

It's pure lust, that's what it is. She feels a vague call of anguish within her at the thought and pushes it from her mind, focusing instead on the feeling of his hands on her bare skin. If anyone deserves this sort of comfort it is her. She lets him make love to her, there on her bed, not thinking of the consequences, only of how fantastically blank the rest of the world has suddenly become. That feeling won't last, no doubt they- this dalliance- shan't either. But while it does, she intends to revel in it, with every last sinew of her being.

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	6. Chapter 6

**Maybe I'm getting silly now.**

**6. Doomed Love**

It is very very silly indeed. You'd have thought that by now, knowing very well what it can do to people, that Isobel would know better than to call love silly. It just happens to have manifested itself in a very inconvenient way. She doesn't add a "this time" to the sentiment, it makes it feel as if she's got something of a track record. It is inconvenient to the point of being silly.

Dr Clarkson is a mixture of every man she's fallen for in the past. Well, all two of them. Three, she corrects herself, trying not to cringe at the thought of her adolescence. He reminds her rather painfully of Reginald, though not quite as exuberant and bouncy. Perhaps Reginald would have calmed down a bit with age. He has the gravity and rather worn out aspect of Reginald's successor too.

It would be another doctor, she thinks to herself, in something like frustration. Perhaps a liking for medical men is inherited from mother to daughter. If anything, it was rather refreshing to have an affair with a bank clerk and not have to mention science once. She laughs rather hollowly to herself, earning herself an odd look from Molesley- who scuttles out quickly. He probably thinks she's mad; perhaps she is, has anybody checked?

She felt it strongly in the moment when he took the adrenalin from her hand. Sink or swim together. There was something about the man that thrilled her in that moment. And urge of similar spirits meeting and working towards the same thing. That was what love was about, more or less, wasn't it?

Working, that was the thing. It seemed very much now that theirs was to be a working relationship, with her the chairman of the board of his hospital. Working with a very dragon in Cousin Violet breathing down their necks. With eagle eyes. Theirs, hers, theirs was a doomed love before it even started, really.

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	7. Chapter 7

**7. True Love**

Surely this is true love. Her longest love; her most enduring love; her one single unconditional love. Her son, Matthew. Right from the moment he was born, the most beautiful baby in the whole world, when it felt as if everyone was expecting her child to be an ugly duckling. Reginald told her not to be ridiculous; then indulged in the joke of buying a small stuffed duckling for his son, when she was still lying in. She laughed until she hurt all over. Matthew gurgled happily, and that was when she knew she would always always love this child. He had a sense of humour.

And that didn't change. Without seeming to think about it, he held her together in the years after Reginald died. At first she rather resented his decision to go away to school; but as it turned out, in deciding to he knew much better than her what would be good for both of them.

She knew he had felt rather as if he had let her down in deciding to be a solicitor, as opposed to a doctor. Ridiculous boy, she doubts he could let him down if he tried. To be sure, she was miffed; and a more selfish vein in her could have wished that he'd followed in his father's and his grandfather's footsteps. But then she was reminded of herself and of her own mother: she had to let him go his own way, and let him know that she was proud of him whatever he chose to be. There were worse careers than the law, after all. She'd have laughed herself to death in something vaguely resembling irony if he'd become a banker.

It is strange to see him as an object of desire, she realises, watching him with Mary Crawley. She knew it would happen one day, yet it's still a surprise. Mary's a nice enough girl. Isobel only hopes that one day she'll love Matthew as much as she does; then they might be able to sort themselves out.

She knows that she must take a step back; allow him his own decisions- her worst nightmare is to become a burden to her own son. She feels incredibly fortunate to still have him living here with her. Not that she wants to keep and eye on him; she enjoys his company. And she knows it is only a matter of time until she must hand him on- to his wife or to the running of the Grantham estate. She will make the most of the time they have now.

**End.**

**I have grown very fond of Isobel, I'd like to write some more for her but I'm not sure how much time I'll have when I go back to school. When I get a spare moment, though, I'm sure I'll write something. Please review if you have the time. **


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